Monday, August 5, 2013

Thailand adding 1,000MW of Solar PV by 2014

In Renewable Energy sector, Thailand is known to be more aggressive than any of its Southeast Asia counterparts. Within the next one and a half years, the kingdom plans to install 1,000 MW of solar photovoltaic - 200 MW for individual rooftops, and 800 MW for community-owned installations.

Table 1: Thailand's Feed-in Tariffs for Solar PV. There is currently 400 MW of PV installed in Thailand.

Table 2: Malaysia's Feed-in Tariffs for Solar PV

Aggressive move by Thailand

Since Thailand launched its aggressive feed-in tariff program in 2006, the country has installed nearly 1,000 MW of renewables and has a portfolio of signed contracts of more than 4,000 MW, nearly half of that for solar PV.

Unlike Malaysia, contracts were for a limited time period of 10 years or less. But that has changed recently - Thailand’s National Energy Policy Commission (NEPC) has approved new feed-in tariffs for both rooftop and ground-mounted solar PV with contract terms of 25 years.

This brings the Thai program into alignment with similar programs in Germany, Great Britain, and Ontario, Canada. According to a release by Thailand’s Energy Research Institute, the new feed-in tariffs for solar PV will be differentiated by size and application. There will be three size tranches for rooftop solar PV, and a separate tranche for community-owned, ground-mounted installations.

NEPC has set aside 200 MW for rooftop solar PV, but it must be installed by the end of the year (2013. 100 MW is set aside for systems less than 10 kW in size, and another 100 MW is set aside for systems from 10 kW to 1 MW. The remaining 800 MW is reserved for community-owned projects and must be installed by year end 2014.